Tips and tricks on preparing for the GMAT without breaking the bank

First things first: massive congratulations to everyone graduating these weeks - what an achievement!?

Life is full of repeating cycles and with exams done I know many people are thinking about their next big exam: the GMAT.?

Most of the people I spoke to were already set on doing the GMAT so I won’t go into any comparisons (which frankly I don’t think I’d have much to say about anyways), instead I wanted to share my experience on how to escape all the money traps surrounding the GMAT and how you can get an affordable yet outstanding score.?

There are plenty of providers and coaches out there charging mind-boggling sums for GMAT training. Paying ￡600 or even ￡1200 for GMAT prep no longer seems to be the exception and even many of my lower budget peers have spent hundreds of pounds on books, sample tests and retakes.?

I’m a firm believer that your test performance shouldn’t depend on how much money you can afford to spend on practice sessions so I wanted to take a moment and speak about some strategies and resources for free GMAT prep.?

Here’s the bad news first: you won’t get around the GMAT exam fee but if you prepare well you’ll only have to pay it once and there are waiver options for low-income candidates (although you’ll have to get them via a school since they are not directly handed out to individuals).?

So how do you prep well??

I believe it’s all about preparing for the format. Having graduated with a Bachelors degree I’m certain you’re sufficiently smart to solve 90% of all problems on the exam. The trick is doing so strategically and at a very fast pace over more than two hours.?

Therefore, forget about any theory books or practice questions that don’t look exactly like the official GMAT ones (start with the free GMAT official prep to get a feeling for what they are like) and dive straight into the juicy stuff. For my exam I spent 10 days doing min 120 questions a day and then another five days with a full practice test every day (it’s draining and your score might initially go down but you’ll get there if you keep pushing). I’m by no means implying that this exact schedule will work for everyone else but I believe in the fundamental strategy: do a lot of practice questions in a short time and get a feeling for how long the exam is.?

You might ask where all those questions and exams are supposed to come from when the company behind the GMAT charges roughly ￡40 per test. The good news is the community and advertising has you covered. Let me examine these two one by one:

1. Community practice material?

GMAT-club and e-gmat will be your best friends during preparation, students and teachers from the entire world have crowd-sourced near endless questions and articles on these websites. They even offer exam-modes where the website will supply you with a steady stream of questions and keep the timer running. The best thing about it: there are lots of very detailed answers written by people like you and me who were preparing for the exam meaning that they are easy to follow and often very intuitively explained.?

Even when using official prep questions I found myself going back to these forums simply because you can find almost any question on here as well and the forum explanations are much better than the official ones.?

There’s just one downside to all this: the GMAT is an automatically adjusting exam that will pick questions depending on your performance in the preceding questions. Sadly, that’s a behaviour all the forums I used couldn’t or weren’t good at simulating. That’s why I spent the last five days before my exam doing full practice tests - more on how I got them in the next section.?

2. Free advertising material?

Instead of paying the huge industry behind the GMAT turn the table to your advantage and use all the advertising material (previews, free tests, sample lessons,…) as your free practice material!?

A lot of people actually find out about free sample exams, take one and then get stuck with that provider paying crazy sums for the next paper. By all means, if you’re a working professional who can afford it and searching for structured, hassle-free preparation purchase these exams and courses - that’s exactly the customer type most providers are aiming for. However, if you’re a student, currently unemployed, or for any other reason not able to pay for expensive courses create a list of all the prep providers out there and use all the free sample resources each one of them offers. Doing so will easily get you 5-6 completely different yet very realistic practice tests.?

Finally, if you have a lot of time you might want to try another strategy I’ve been hearing a lot about but haven’t been able to try myself: write and answer / explain your own exam questions.?

I know this sounds strange at first but it helps toy get into the heads of the people designing the GMAT and understand frequent patterns on the exam. If you post your questions on forums you’ll get plenty of feedback and will yourself contribute to the community - what a way to end your preparation period!?

That’s all I have to suggest for now. I hope some of the above ideas will help you achieve an amazing GMAT score on a budget and let me know how your preparation goes! If this is interesting to you I might do a deep dive with some more thoughts about approaching the GMAT.?

At the end of the day, remember that standardised test scores are only one part of your application and never ever define you. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself and bear in mind what your ultimate goals are: where do you want to be in 10, 20 or 50 years? Probably looking back regardless of your score the GMAT will only be a small stop along the way.?